Before Sunrise

by Diana Palmer

  “All of us have done desperate things in a moment of despair,” Drake said. “We usually have the good fortune to survive them.”

  Cortez touched the little boy’s hair with his fingertips. “I took a month off and spent it breaking wild horses on a cousin’s ranch, just after I got married.”

  The older man was making a point, and Drake understood. “I imagine you didn’t even get kicked,” he mused.

  Cortez laughed without humor. “I got bitten twice.” He glanced at Drake. “You can’t die when you want to.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m not a suicidal person, but I joined a combat unit after my girl dumped me,” he replied. “Her people didn’t want her to have a half-breed’s kids.”

  Cortez’s dark eyes lost their last trace of hostility. “Somebody once told me that we live in a world that no longer discriminates.”

  “Bull,” Drake said passionately.

  “That’s what I told her,” Cortez agreed. “You can’t legislate equality or morality. Pity.”

  Drake chuckled. “Yeah.”

  Cortez indicated Phoebe’s note. “Thanks for bringing this by. I’ll share it with the unit tomorrow and we’ll see what we can come up with.”

  “You’re welcome. I’ll help keep an eye on Miss Keller.”

  “Thanks.”

  Drake shrugged. “I like her, too. She doesn’t see color, did you notice?”

  Cortez gave him a look that spoke volumes.

  Drake held up a hand defensively and grinned. “I’ll see you around, then. Oh, one other thing,” he added from the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Under the circumstances, don’t you think it’s a little careless to be sitting in here with a child, with the door unlocked?”

  Just as he said that, the doorknob turned and a woman who looked about Drake’s age walked in with a bag of disposable pull-up diapers. She stared at Drake intensely with dark eyes in a pretty round face surrounded by long, thick black hair. She grinned suddenly, her white teeth startling in her dark face.

  “Are you going to arrest him?” she asked Drake enthusiastically, nodding toward Cortez. “Can I put the handcuffs on?”

  Drake was nonplussed. He couldn’t think of a reply.

  Cortez chuckled. He looked suddenly years younger. “That’s Tina,” he said. “She’s my cousin. My regular baby-sitter is back in Lawton, Oklahoma, with a bad case of shingles. My father’s too old to be a nanny and I couldn’t manage Joseph alone, so I talked Tina into coming up here with me. She lives in Asheville. She works in the local library, but she moonlights as a tour guide at the Biltmore Estate on weekends,” he added, naming a famous tourist spot.

  “Everybody around here thinks I’m Cherokee,” she said, the grin widening. “Hi. I’m Christina Redhawk.” She noticed the look her cousin was giving her and she chuckled. “He uses the name Cortez. I like our own family name better.”

  “I’m Drake Stewart,” he replied.

  “You live here?” she asked.

  “I’m a deputy sheriff.”

  She made a face. “Another lawman.” She shook her head and went to put the diapers down on one of the beds. “He’s always playing matchmaker for me, with every new single agent who works with him,” she indicated Cortez. “That’s why I moved to North Carolina. I date a policeman in Asheville.” She gave Cortez a speaking look. “Of course, he isn’t half as cute as you are, Drake,” she added with a sly look.

  “Drake was leaving,” Cortez said at once, standing up carefully so as not to wake the child. “Here.” He handed Joseph to her. “He’s going to have to sleep in your room tonight. I’ve got some work to do on the Internet.”

  “I’ll take good care of him.” She took Joseph and paused at the door where Drake was standing. “Maybe I’ll see you,” she said with a grin.

  Drake chuckled. “Maybe so, if we can ditch him,” he jerked his thumb toward Cortez playfully.

  “He likes old coins,” she said in a stage whisper.

  “I’ve got a 1976 nickel,” he told Cortez hopefully.

  The other man laughed, rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, and went to the laptop he’d set up at the table by the window.

  “Once he turns that thing on, he doesn’t know anybody’s in the room,” Tina said. “We might as well leave. Good night, cousin.”

  Cortez nodded, already logging on to the Internet with nimble fingers.

  Drake closed the motel door behind them and gave Tina a curious smile. “You look like him.”

  “Our fathers are two of three brothers,” she said simply. “It’s a pity we’re so closely related—he’s a real hunk. But even if we weren’t, there was this young girl at a college somewhere back East. He went crazy for her. Then his brother got killed and the girl he lived with was pregnant. Her people wanted a termination, but Cousin Jeremiah’s mother got hysterical and said she’d die if the baby did. So Jeremiah got married.” She shook her head, turning away without realizing Drake knew she was talking about Phoebe Keller. “It was bad, too. The girl really loved Isaac. A month after Joseph was born, she hanged herself on the back porch.”

  Drake could hardly believe the other man’s terrible luck. “But your cousin didn’t go back to find the girl?”

  “He tried to. Her people wouldn’t tell him anything except she hated him,” Tina replied softly. “He said he’d sent her just a newspaper clipping of the wedding, nothing else. He came home. Lost his job as a federal prosecutor because his mother died and he couldn’t leave Joseph with his dad.” She shook her head. “He’s had a lot of heartache. Losing that girl did something to him. He was laughing tonight, with you,” she added. “That’s the first time I’ve heard Jeremiah laugh in three years!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BY DAWN, Cortez had grabbed a few hours sleep, after exhausting the bulk of the searchable databases for clues to the murder victim’s identity. Sometimes cases solved themselves. This one was going to be like pulling teeth, he just knew it.

  He dressed in a suit, tied his hair into a ponytail, and left Joseph with Tina while he played a hunch.

  The one thing he was certain of was that the murdered man had been in contact with someone in construction working on a local project. He had the crime lab photo of the dead man’s face. He had FBI credentials. He was going to knock on a few doors and see if he could rattle anybody.

  The biggest project going was the theme park hotel being erected just inside the Chenocetah city limits. Two projects almost that size were splayed around the mountain that contained caves, also barely inside the city limits.

  There was a trailer serving as the construction boss’s headquarters. Cortez knocked on the door.

  A tall, good-looking blond man of about thirty-five opened it and gave Cortez a curious look. “We’re not hiring,” he said pleasantly.

  “I’m not looking for work.” Cortez flashed his ID.

  The man grimaced. “Sorry. We’ve had to turn away a lot of would-be employees this week. Seems like half the reservation’s down here looking for jobs.”

  Cortez followed the man into the trailer and sat down in the straight chair he was offered. The desk was cluttered with blueprints and documents. Among them was a gold-framed photograph of a pretty young blue-eyed blond woman, and a golf trophy.

  “I’d offer you coffee, but I just drank the last cup and there’s no more until I send one of the guys out to the store,” the blond man said politely. He folded his hands on the makeshift desk. “What can I do for the FBI?”

  Cortez took the photo out of his pocket and slid it across the desk. “You can tell me if you’ve ever seen this man.”

  The other man studied it quietly, frowning. “He doesn’t look familiar. Does he work for us in a subcontracting capacity or something?” he asked with genuine curiosity.

  “That’s what I need to know,” Cortez replied. “He was murdered.”

  The other man was very still. “On our property?”

  “No.”

&nb
sp; There was a sigh of heartfelt relief. “Thank God,” he murmured, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. “I catch hell if there’s any delay at all,” he explained ruefully. “We had a load of steel drop-shipped here, and they shorted us. We had to sit on our hands until it showed up. I thought the boss was going to skin me alive!”

  Cortez took out his pad and pen. “The contractor?” he asked politely.

  “I’m the contractor. Sorry. I’m Jeb Bennett,” he introduced himself. “Bennett Construction. My company works out of Atlanta.”

  “How long have you been working here?”

  “Three months,” Bennett said. “If I’d known how hard the man was going to push us, I’d have thought twice about accepting. I don’t like having my men harassed on the job. I’ve had to use some bad language—and a few threats—to a couple of the owner’s subordinates.”

  That was interesting. A man in a hurry to complete a job would have problems with an archaeological site being discovered on his land. Cortez lifted his dark eyes to the other man’s blue ones. “Who’s the boss?”

  “Theo Popadopolis,” he replied. “They call him the ‘Big Greek’ in hotel circles. He’s got a temper almost as bad as mine, and he pinches pennies. He’s a self-made man. His dad came here after World War II as an electrical engineer. Within twenty years, he owned a small contracting business. Theo inherited it, and within twenty years, he was a multimillionaire.”

  “Legally?” Cortez wondered.

  “Who knows. He’s got power. He uses it.”

  “Do you have a contact number for him?”

  Bennett smiled. “Indeed I do. I wish I could be a fly on the wall when you talk to him.” He thumbed through a card file and pulled out a business card. “I’ve got two. You can have this one. You can tell him I referred you,” he added with a flash of blue eyes. “That’ll give him something to think about.”

  Cortez’s dark eyes twinkled. “Wicked.”

  “Isn’t it?” Bennett mused. “If we down tools, he’ll be in a bind, won’t he?” He stood up. “If you need anything else, I’ll be around, or my foreman will know where to find me.”

  “Who’s your foreman?” Cortez asked on a whim.

  “Dick Walks Far,” he said. “He’s Cherokee. Hard worker. Honest man,” he added, averting his eyes as if he didn’t want to say more. “He worked for me in Atlanta.”

  “North Carolina Cherokee?” Cortez wondered.

  He hesitated and then shook his head. “Oklahoma.”

  “Could I have a word with him?” Cortez asked immediately.

  “Sure.” Bennett stuck his head out the door and yelled for the foreman. He didn’t need a bullhorn.

  Cortez held his ear.

  Bennett chuckled when he noticed. “Loud voices go with the job,” he told him.

  A minute later, a tall, dark man in working gear and a white helmet walked up the steps. He stopped dead when Cortez took out his ID and showed it to him.

  “What’d I do?” he asked immediately.

  Cortez’s eyebrows arched. “If you don’t know, don’t ask me.”

  The Cherokee’s face relaxed and he chuckled. “Osiyo,” he greeted in the Oklahoma Cherokee greeting—Eastern Cherokees omitted the “O.”

  Cortez narrowed one eye. “I’m Comanche.”

  “Ah. In that case, Ma ruawe! Unha hakai nuusuka?” he said in Comanche, grinning. “Hello. How are you?”

  Cortez was impressed. He answered him, in Comanche. “Tsaatu, untse?” He smiled. “How is that you speak the tongue of the people?” he asked in his own dialect.

  “My mother is Comanche,” Walks Far replied pleasantly in English. “What’s the FBI doing here? Bennett cheat on his taxes?” he teased the boss.

  “No. Homicide investigation,” Cortez replied, palming the photo of his victim. He flashed it under Walks Far’s nose. “Ever see this guy?”

  The reaction was immediate, but quickly hidden. Walks Far blinked twice, frowned, and leaned toward the photo. “Yeah,” he said after a minute. “He came by last week, asking about caves.”

  “Caves?” Cortez asked.

  “He said he was an archaeologist,” Walks Far continued. “Somebody had told him about a big find, but not where to look. He said all he knew was that it was a building site under construction, in a cave. So he wanted to see ours.”

  “What did you tell him?” Cortez asked.

  “I showed him the caves,” Walks Far replied. “He looked around, said thank you, and left.”

  “Was he driving?” Cortez asked.

  “Search me,” Walks Far replied and seemed uneasy. “I didn’t see where he went.”

  “What are you going to do about the caves?” Cortez wanted to know, in case he had to bring the investigators over to check for clues.

  “Nothing,” Walks Far said, surprised at the question. “They’re on the back side of our site, near the river, hidden by a grove of fir trees.”

  “We plan to leave the caves on our property,” Bennett said. “As a tourist attraction. The Big Greek knows a local guy who specializes in spelunking. He’s going to offer cave tours.” Bennett grinned. “More tourist revenue, unless somebody gets stuck in one.”

  Walks Far chuckled. “I’m not going in no cave,” he told the other two men. “Bats in there!”

  “We’ll ask the bats to leave before the tours open,” Bennett promised.

  “Good luck,” Cortez told him. He slid the photo back into his pocket, covertly watching the two men for reactions, but nothing was forthcoming. “You don’t know any of the other crews working in the area, by any chance?”

  “Well, I know one,” Bennett said, and his face tautened. “Paul Corland and his gang. They’re from somewhere in South Carolina. They put up a shopping mall and a wall collapsed. Killed two workers. They were shut down while it was investigated, but it was attributed to substandard materials.”

  “You don’t believe that,” Cortez noted, reading the younger man’s cold expression.

  “No, I don’t,” Bennett said. “When you’ve been in this business a while, you learn the good guys from the bad guys. Corland’s rotten. Anybody who hired him without knowing him had better carry big liability insurance.” He pointed north. “He’s building a hotel for some local investors, about a mile past our site over near the river. You might check with the licensing guys at the state capitol and the local planning commission. Just a hunch.”

  Cortez extended his hand. “Thanks,” he said.

  Bennett shook it and shrugged. “I run a clean shop. I don’t like people who cheat.”

  “That makes two of us,” Cortez replied.

  “Three,” Walks Far interjected. “Take it easy,” he told Cortez solemnly.

  “You do the same,” Cortez replied. He thanked Bennett for his time and asked for directions to the caves.

  “Do you mind if I have a look around them later?” he asked Bennett.

  “No problem,” the contractor replied. “Help yourself.”

  “Thanks.”

  CORTEZ DROVE BY the cave on his way out of the building site. Perhaps there was sign there, something he could read. It hadn’t rained since the dead man’s body was found, and it wasn’t predicted for several days. There might be tire tracks, a gum wrapper, a cigarette butt that he could trace to the victim. He was going tracking.

  Tomorrow, he was going to check out Corland’s operation.

  He stopped by the motel to check on Tina and Joseph, changed into jeans and pulled a checked, long-sleeved flannel shirt over his black T-shirt. As an afterthought, he let his hair down and put on his sunglasses.

  On a whim, he whipped the car into the parking lot of Phoebe’s museum and took the steps in three long strides.

  Marie, just coming out of Phoebe’s office, stopped dead at the sight of him.

  “Siyo,” he said politely in Cherokee as she moved aside. “Excuse me,” he added, going right past her into Phoebe’s office. He closed the door behind him.

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nbsp; Phoebe, who was on the phone, looked up. It was like a baseball bat hitting her stomach. Her lips parted on a soft explosion of breath. Time stood still. She was back in Charleston, back in time, back in love. He looked exactly as he had the first day she knew him, when he took her to track a polluter’s truck.

  He took off the sunglasses and stuck the earpiece in his pocket. “I’m going tracking,” he said. “Want to come?”

  The phone was still in her hand, poised in midair. A voice was repeating, “Hello? Hello?”

  She blinked and brought it back to her ear. “I’m sorry, I’ll have to…to call you back. Thanks.”

  She hung up, missing the first time before she fumbled the receiver back into the cradle.

  She got to her feet unsteadily, her blue eyes glittering, glaring at him as surprise gave way to fury. He thought he could walk back in and wipe out what he’d done to her by asking her to track with him? He thought it was going to be that easy? Her temper exploded.

  “Three years,” she said icily. “Three long, empty years. You sent me a damned newspaper clipping…!” She fumbled in the drawer for it and waved it at him. “A newspaper clipping, without a word of explanation, apology, anything! You didn’t even have the courtesy to explain why you’d talked about a future with me and then married some other woman overnight! And then you come walking in here in the middle of my workday like nothing ever happened and you want me to go tracking with you?” She threw the newspaper clipping at him. Her eyes were blazing. “You go to hell! You vicious, cold-blooded, insensitive, second cousin to a desert sand viper…!”

  He was around the desk before she could get it all out. He reached out, slammed her body into his, bent her back across his hip and kissed her as if he were facing imminent execution.

  “You…!” she muttered, fighting him. She tried to kick him. He simply wrapped his ankle around hers and she fell heavily against him, holding on to keep from falling.